


When We Are Finally Free

by insightful_username



Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Cha Hakyeon | N-centric, Character Death, Computers, Dark, End of the World, Hakyeon is not mentioned by name, Implied Relationships, M/M, Mutilation, Serious Injuries, Silence, Suicide, Torture, but they're not in the forefront, idk though - Freeform, kind of like voodoo doll, relationships aren't implied, rovix is a computer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 19:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19382821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insightful_username/pseuds/insightful_username
Summary: When the world ends at the hands of a terrible series of explosions, a bleak and barren wasteland is left in the place what of all the humans had worked on for centuries. With no presumed survivors, R.O.V.I.X., a supercomputer, is left there to thrive and build up what it perceives to be a utopia. A world without humans. Then it finds the six survivors, and they have to claw for a faraway freedom that never seems to come.





	When We Are Finally Free

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually very loosely (and I mean loosely) based off the book, "i have no mouth, and i must scream," and the titular game under the same title. in fact, this is kind of a tribute to the book's author, who actually died a year ago today (at least if we're going by u.s. time).

The mushroom cloud had long passed, yet the air still hung down to the ground, penetrating under the crust and into the pit of the planet with the ease of a machine. It left a blanket, masking the fallout from the people rising to the heavens. All except him. He’d blinked and his entire world shattered to nonexistence. He had to watch, horrified as every single person he knew fused to the ground, melting away until their yells ceased. He was resigned to watch his house fall apart, hearing his mother and father plead through their last attempts to contact his siblings that had long moved away.

He was rescued from the scraps of his house, yet he didn't feel it. There was no way he could’ve over the biting pain buzzing through his extremities like the slow stinging of hundreds of bees, surrounding him until it's no longer him. He felt it ebbing away at him, burning him down to the ground like everything else, but he didn't die.

He couldn’t. After all, he was in the now. He was immortal against the dead fallout, against the blinding mist that shrouded the entire world in a deep grey. It was a gentle kiss on the cheek that morphed and amalgamated into a piercing bite. It was a gentle caress that turned to a bruisingly strong grasp against what was left of him. And at the root of it, he wasn't the only victim.

Being stuck with a piece of sadistic hardware, named R.O.V.I.X. no less, was no better than being stuck with a toaster out where there’s no bread or electricity. And at least the toaster wouldn’t have beaten him until he was black and blue all over, until he was—they were—begging for mercy. And being stuck with five other people, all beaten and mangled until they were no longer humanesque felt crushing.

He felt an ounce of relief when the computer tore into one of the other people out there, trapped with him and torture each one of them one-by-one. But the more blood he saw through more lacerations were more than enough to sicken him beyond himself.

The poorly shouts from a sudden ambush were bloodcurdling. Guttural sounds that tore from sewed lips that broke away at their seams, with a quality that managed to transverse the bounds of torn vocal chords. They shook the frames of each of their seperate rooms, ratting the very foundation they stood on.

“Is it finally gone?” one of the boys asked once the machine had drifted out from their only connection to the rest of the world. The boy’s voice was grisled like a rusty pipe, yet the boy still carried the remnants of a young, just barely scraping past pubescence, voice. The deep hoarseness was still scarily child-like, and his martyrdom seemed so much more salient. The boy—Sanghyuk—looked and sounded worse than him tenfold, though he had no proof. He couldn’t see himself; he wouldn't have been able to stand it if he had.

“Is that even a question?” the only one of them that still looked visibly fine, yet still debilitated beyond what was physically right, responded. The conventionally attractive, yet weak man, Hongbin, was sitting as high as he could without coming undone.

He watched the computer tear Hongbin apart and put the man back together again. In the wrong places, tear the man apart again, and attach the extremities back one muscle at a time. The split skin peeling back, slicked against the man’s broken extremities with blood and sweat so sticky, it was a paste; a glue.

“Well yeah, maybe it got bored and left,” Sanghyuk’s voice fizzled out like a disappointing pyrotechnic, yet the boy still seemed so hopeful. Hope was so inapplicable, hopelessness seemed so much more pertinent to them.

“There’s literally nothing anywhere else but here.”

They—the six of them—were the lucky few who survived, yet the more he thought about it, the less lucky they seemed. They were winning the lottery and consequently getting struck by lightning. The idea of surviving seemed so special when they were told in class, yet it required a Herculean psyche to even want to survive. The disillusionment was borderline pavlovian, gifting them with life for good behavior and a torturous existence for bad, and combined until they were trapped in a loophole where they were both tortured and allowed to live.

“He’s right,” Jaehwan chimed in, the most melodious of the bunch. Jaehwan was the only one of them, maybe only two of them who hadn’t completely lost their voices. One of the others never spoke, and very rarely yelled; none of them knew. It was a breath of fresh air to hear it, both literally and figuratively. A quick smile in Hongbin’s direction, and Jaehwan continued, “We’re the most fun it can have.”

Although not matching in tone, Jaehwan was unfortunately correct.

“I guess,” the youngest frowned as far as his ripped mouth could allow, the boy’s impossibly thin jaw visibly cracking at each action.

The remains of whatever fluorescent bulbs were shining before flickered precariously. R.O.V.I.X. never caused too much destruction, so when the bulb directly above him shattered, he knew something was wrong. The incandescent filament and still burning bulbs hissed at his skin, and attacked with the same elegance as a pouncing cat.

For a moment, a lacuna in action, he believed the computer would never have returned, yet there it was, picking another one of them out from their chamber. Wonshik, he noticed. The man drifted like a feather across the wind, floating until stagnation.

The machine spoke, deep within the trenches of the uncanny valley, a realistic voice paired with a monitor for a body was oddly unsettling, “I saw that,” it said, plucking with its slowly rusting claw, a gleaming object he hardly saw before it tossed the object aside.

Wonshik never yelled, though he was biting the remains of his lips, none of them did when the robot grabbed onto them. They all tried not to in hopes to balk the computer’s harrowing desires of epicaricacy.

The shouting had stopped what felt like centuries ago, though he wasn't sure. Time passed like a snail sliding slowly off a branch only to attempt to go up the same tree all over again. It filled the tedium of time with an abuse that sent their guts flying only to spring back into their bodies moments later.

Even though the yelling stopped, the throat-tearing shrieks echoed through his numb brain, and sent chills down his spine. He couldn't forget, even when he closed his eyes and attempted to wash them out with memories of the far too distant past. But that wasn’t what happened, it never was. Even with the moist noise of cutting through tired muscles and thin skin piercing through his ears in cannibalistic sloshes.

Maybe if he were stronger, he would’ve been traumatized. But now, he was too idle, too much of a vegetable, to have ever begun to feel it.

Wonshik’s fingers were gone. Not physically, they appeared to be perfectly intact, albeit stained with a red that never seemed to ebb away. A red that came with a throb. They'd found out when Wonshik suddenly exclaimed, “I can’t feel my hands,” in a delirious panic.

“Hey, Hey,” Hongbin has responded in his broken voice, “You’ll be fine.”

The semblance of care was rare. Especially for Hongbin, he’d noticed. They all had lives before the world was destroyed. And maybe if they’d met under better circumstances, they may have become friends. But with the death of society, excluding them, they had to fight not to be killed by the machine.

That was, until they realized what R.O.V.I.X.’s intention was. They no longer scraped for survival, though they still weren’t necessarily friends.

He’d never seen Wonshik so panicked. It seemed so minute compared to anyone else’s injuries that it felt borderline blasphemous of even try to. Livelihoods didn’t matter, they had none, after all.

“No, no, no,” hysteria trembled the raspy voice. Wonshik was visibly shaken, pacing around his room until the panic shattered into nothingness. The room echoed the sobs that reverberated off the walls. Wonshik cried, “What are we supposed to do now?”

It didn't take much to fathom the root of Wonshik’s panic. The man had a plan for them to escape, and it failed.

~~

He was being torn apart the same way Hongbin was, yet it felt so much more tortuous and long. Like every rip of his skin was centuries long and pricked his sensitive nerves with a seemingly lethal pain. Rearranged skin formed puzzles across his chest and arms and legs. Hues of browns tainted by the same sanguinous fluid he’d been seeing for what felt like years were laid across his body in no discernable pattern.

It was pointless.

He almost screamed when his skin was torn from his body, but he couldn’t even open his mouth.

~~

The machine was named for a reason. “RObot Venerating In eXaltation,” shortened to R.O.V.I.X., and intended to rise above and lead them to some form of salvation. It was intended for peace. The programmers didn't realize it's true nature.

The acronym was such a lie, he would’ve pissed himself laughing if not for the desperate yells implanted into the back of his head that pounded for freedom on the from behind his forehead, and the sight of his friend being torn into for the pleasure of the same machine meant to save them all only served to make it more clear.

“I’ve got nothing,” Jaehwan had said once all moving had stagnated in a trepidated breath. They were all despondent to the greatest degree, yet they were vying for freedom.

No response. They knew the rumble when R.O.V.I.X. approached like the back of their hands.

One hundred and god knows how many years ago, they pieced together the pattern. Every month, they were released at once, taken by the back of their necks into new chambers. Torture devices to remind them who was the victor of the war: no one.

Cycles of pain until time stopped passing, breaking through thickened skin until it went through the other side. The cages were hardly human-sized, just barely large enough to fit him, and dug into his skin when he backed away from the impending injury. Insanity was enough of a hobby for them to have been consumed by it.

His sense of touch merged with idiosyncrasies and forced him down onto his knees, unable to do anything as he burned. All while his other senses numbed to nothingness, unable to see or smell his dead skin burn and peel off like a molting snake.

Worst of all, it didn't stop or begin. He was there, then he wasn't. Once he’d become used to the charring of his newly sensitive skin and the licks of flame curling around his extremities and constant stream of a bloody pain exacerbated by the inability for time to pass, he allowed his mind to wander.

His skin couldn't blister. He couldn't die in the flames. Despite it, his body made damn well that he felt every flame on every part of his body.

If mortality was one of his worst fears before the world died, the immortality petrified him afterwards.

~~

“We need to think of a way to escape,” it was a rhetorical statement of the obvious on Wonshik’s part, yet they all looked intently at the former rapper and agreed.

“Yeah, and whatever the hell—” Hongbin began only to cough after tripping over a voice crack. The attractive male shook his head and continued, “you planned didn't work.”

Wonshik laughed as genuinely as manageable, though it didn't last long. None of their voices—barring Jaehwan’s—could really do anything for too long, their vocal chords were too broken to to do much. Still, Wonshik began again, “I know that, I’m just saying.”

“Yeah, but we still don't have anything planned for what, the next century?” It was Sanghyuk who spoke next.

He couldn't remember his life before, and he didn't want to imagine the world above ground. After all, he’s heard the sirens before they’d been blasted to smithereens and felt the heat on his entire body moments after the explosion. He didn't want to return to civilization as if there were still people alongside them. It'd be absurd if him to think that.

But he wasn't dumb enough to succumb to Stockholm Syndrome, he never wanted to spend the rest of existence stuck with the computer.

“It’s already been one-hundred years too long, I don't think we can wait out another hundred years whether you think we can or not,” Jaehwan visibly shuddered from behind the bars, “And I don't know about you, but I think we’d go insane is we stay here for that long.”

He would've been remiss to have admitted to believing the one man, who he’d never heard speak and just barely heard yell had already gone insane. Even before, when they’d finally met—still with the appearance of being standard, upstanding citizens—the man had never spoken, and R.O.V.I.X. had never introduced them to each other.

Maybe they’d all lost a bit of their minds the first few times they were torn from their chambers and into the grasp of the super computer. Maybe they were already too far gone. Maybe that's why they freely laughed or smiled when finally talking to each other.

He didn't have the energy to find out.

~~

The computer hadn't returned in days, maybe weeks. Or maybe only for a couple hours. He couldn't be sure, he had no way of telling the time from underneath the ground. But he was exhausted, he needed to stay awake, just so he would see when the computer came back. If the computer came back.

He didn't want to wake up to one or two or all of the others crying out in such a guttural, blood curdling sound in perfect harmony, where he’d have felt nauseous at the sound. In fact, he felt nauseous at the thought.

The others were asleep, though. Perhaps the silent man—the man he didn't think was mute, but resigned to calling the man by that identifier—was glaring at him through the bars, and straight into his soul. He swore he saw the sharp, cold eyes staring back at him from time to time.

If he didn't know better, he’d have thought the mute was a dead rag doll propped up by something beyond his vision. They were unreadable, so bitter from their time there that it consumed whatever ulterior emotion the man was feeling.

“Taekwoon,” it took him a bit to comprehend fully who had just spoken, he was so sleep-deprived. He jumped back from his door, the shockingly reedy voice wasn't an unwelcome surprise, but it startled him beyond belief. The mute clarified, “I can hear you thinking from here… my name’s Taekwoon.”

He wished he could've returned the favor, but through his exhaustion, he couldn't quite place where his mouth was and where his hands lay on his body. His coordination had been destroyed from inside his muddled brain, crumbling faster than the Berlin Wall when the German citizens absconded from their actions, away from the irate officials cursing at their actions.

It was when the threats of rising superpowers and their new technology, atomic bombs, were made public that the officials had been usurped, and cameras had been taken hostage, and floods of people made an exodus out of the city and scatters like rats just so the panicked people could either die with or say goodbye to their remaining family members. The last few seconds of civilization had been chaos, and he was one of the only people who were alone. He remembered, he was one of the few people hanging from the precipice, waiting to die, until the heat passed. Until the sickness passed. He was fine.

“Everyone’s asleep, why aren’t you?” the words were timid, just barely reaching his ears each time they were spoken. Meek in character, the voice was hardly a whisper, yet so firm, he was in a trance. It directed him away from his demise, or his lack thereof.

He didn't respond. He couldn't, his body was numb, numbing his face with the same colorful pain of a green banded broodsac crawling into the eyestalks of an unsuspecting snail, pulsating and debilitating.

“I’m… scared. Too?” Taekwoon stopped, careful yet fast-paced breaths just louder than the gentle drone whirring machinery.

It could have been them two, living in a wood cabin out in a golden field, watching the sun hit the yellow flowers until their waxy petals appeared candescent. They could’ve watched the sun fall from the sky in a slow and steady line from the middle of the sky, and wait until the warmth had finally left.

How he felt so comfortable by the reveal of a shy voice from a scarily impassive countenance was a testament to his trust; just how trusting he truly was. He felt safe, even if for just one second, he didn't worry about the over-looming threat of the computer’s return.

“It’s just terrifying, right? Watching the people you know for longer than you can remember getting tortured for what feels like years on end?” Taekwoon visibly shook his head as if they were walking alongside each other, or sitting across from each other at a table, and continued, “I-I... think I might have an idea on how to get us out of here.”

Of all the things he was expecting some of Taekwoon’s first words to him would’ve been, that wasn’t in the top ten. He still nodded, though, looking through Taekwoon in his attempt to focus his blurred vision.

“This,” Taekwoon raised the crude effigy of a hand attached loosely with nothing more than a few staples and a bit of glue, “can’t come off, but—“

He heard it too, the stirring of one of them, Wonshik, he vaguely heard, let out a snore from deep within his nasal cavities before turning over. They’d known each other for over one-hundred years, he couldn’t possibly get disgusted by any one of them and care anymore. Taekwoon, he wasn’t quite sure if shared the same mentality.

Taekwoon waited, mouthing a quick, “One, two, three, four, five,” to the ground before continuing with before, “Sorry, but since this is made from god knows what, I think I'll be able to find something in it that’s of use for this.”

It brought him the anamnesis of the vaguely recent past, with himself beguiling himself to pretend his internal clock hadn't been shattered forever ago. At some point, he figured, Wonshik managed to obtain a part of Taekwoon’s eccentric prosthetic. That was, unless he just had the least furnished of the few chambers. It was plausible, though highly unlikely. He was never going to give R.O.V.I.X. the benefit of the doubt.

Vaguely, he heard the whir thy way it was conditioned into his brain, a mean of punishment for them all. Taekwoon has long gone from where he'd last seen him, but he couldn't decipher the line drawn between fact and fiction. The aureate string had been spun so thin, he’d fallen off the side and into the abyss of numbness without having taken a single step. He didn't react, not when he had the acumen to protect the others above himself.

~~

The physical soreness hit him millennia after his mental soreness. The supercomputer has evidently scrambled his brain until he couldn't comprehend where he was and what had happened. Messed him up until he was a kid again, his brother a stereotypical bully to their sibling, and he’d forgotten all about where they were.

But with the subtlety of a freight train labeled “THIS IS A TRAIN” pummeling into him at ten miles an hour so he had no choice but to read it. R.O.V.I.X.’s cruelly blank screen stared back at him just so he didn't have to remember the joys of his life before his incarceration.

The sharp pain from his throat up and dull, pulsating pain from his shoulders down wasn’t from a shrieking session gone too far, he knew how the pain of ruptured vocal chords, desperate for an escape, felt.

It wasn't the sewing together of his lips, tetanus inducing threads of metal forced with the same delicacy as an awl being forced through a thick leather. His face had gone numb too long ago.

He didn't want to know, he just wanted it to stop.

~~

He wished he’d enlisted, or had been drafted when tensions boiled over. He wouldn’t have been home, listening to his parents’ complaints of his ignoble inability to help in one ear, and hearing the bomb threats in the other. Coalescing into a scramble of unbearable white noise so loud, he was ready to tear his ears out.

Maybe then he wouldn’t have survived when everyone he loved had died. Maybe then he would've been able to join his parents in death.

Then, he woke up without his parents, decidedly not dead. And then he was thrown into a chamber, still breathing, still living.

He should've been with his family, but he was still stuck with virtual strangers.

~~

“So,” Jaehwan began, much to the dismay of the other men, “I feel like we should get to know each other better, since we’re getting closer to being free.”

There was no way in hell Jaehwan had the clairvoyance to predict that, although things had been getting better, so who was he to judge.

“I’d hate to break it to you, but we're not boy scouts,” the sour tinged words hit Jaehwan head on.

“Well I’m bored,” how Jaehwan had developed such a sense of ennius, he’d never be able to tell. Sure, they had nothing to do, but the mere dread occupied too much of his time to feel that way.

“Okay alcoholics anonymous, who’d like to start?” Hongbin motioned out, terribly dark and stained fingers a black and white juxtaposition between his largely unmarred face.

“Haha, very funny,” Jaehwan retorted before redirecting his attention to the rest of them, “But I’m still bored.”

“Hwan,” the revelation likely should've come sooner, those two were always close despite being meters apart, though the other's voice lilted with exasperation, “For once in your life, just shut the fuck up.”

“Can you keep your little drama to yourselves?” Sanghyuk grumbled, irritated to no end. They all were, Sanghyuk was the only one to express it.

They didn't have the energy to speak any further. Try as he might—Jaehwan, energetic as possible—wasn't able to get any of the rest of them close to the same wavelength. The computer had pounded them into the ground until either their bones split or the ground began to crumble.

There were cracks in the ground. And all of their muscles were sore beyond hell.

~~

There came a time where the robot increased their sensitivity as easily as changing it for a computer mouse. A time where every sound of the other men clenching their jaws, or the swallowing of blood, or the ripping of muscles, or the rapid beating of a the sensory overload induced paralysis made everything feel like both too much and too little and left him in a lacuna where he didn't—he couldn't—feel alive. He was drifting across feeling and not.

He had no doubts that any of the other men were suffering to the same caliber as him, yet all he thought of was how much his body ached. Granted, he couldn't see past himself, all but one sense, sight, had been increased tenfold. It was egocentric, struggling to even compose himself without even acknowledging anyone else.

Some time later—in fact, maybe even days later—the fog around his head had finally cleared and he was finally able to see his friends without hearing their internal cries for mercy first. The swimming vertigo gave way to the visual he’d been expecting, but wasn’t prepared for.

The sanguine stains that hugged the metal of their cages like layers of rust built up over years, unable to let go and regain its silver sheen again was the first thing to catch his eye, and certainly wasn’t the worst. Perhaps the worst was the reanimated body parts squirming on the ground. Maybe the Caesar-esque protrusions from Hongbin’s back, the pricks of a porcupine peeking from the small window they each have. Or even the tools castaway mere feet away from each of their caves, all stained with the same red fluid, with no indication of on how many people or times they’d been used. He didn’t want to know the answer. Whichever one had won, he couldn’t concentrate on it anymore. The machine had returned seconds after he’d come to.

The silence was worse than taunts. It shook his innards until they threatened to shoot out of him and consume him whole. As R.O.V.I.X. opened up his cage door, he was greeted by a deafening silence.

And he had to scream.

~~

“Should we even try? Leaving. Is it really worth it?” Wonshik had asked when the air had turned suddenly sweltering. Summers no longer existed; they didn’t know how anything other than the supercomputer’s cold, hard claws taking them with the delicacy of a child and it’s toys, throwing them to their own sliver of hell. The manifestation of hell was likely the perpetrator, but he didn’t care. None of them did. Wonshik, who was visibly leaning tiredly against the metal bars, continued, “I mean, why go if we’re just going to get captured again?”

“Yeah, but it’s gotta be better than here,” Jaehwan leaned against the bars of the cage, flames licking up his impenetrable skin.

“No, Jaehwan, we've been here for a century. What difference would it make if we escape or not?” Hongbin added, unperturbed by the electricity emanating in bright sparks around his body.

“But we’re close. I know it.”

“You've been saying that for a hundred years. Give up, Jaehwan,” the handsome male shrugged his shoulders, the remains of his durable shirt slipping down his skin, slowed only by the light sheen covering his body.

“Why should I if there are still people out there to help us?”

“Jaehwan, honey, let it go. We can’t leave,” Hongbin coddled Jaehwan, letting the older down gently.

“Actually I have a solution.”

“Why don’t you guys understand what I think?” Jaehwan was irate, ready to go into a conniption if not for the physical barriers between him and his opponents.

“Hey, guys—”

“It’s not worth it,” Wonshik echoed himself, distorted with time.

“I’ve fou—” Sanghyuk yelled, “I’d hate to butt into your conversation, but we’re gonna leave if you guys don’t hurry up.”

It was a surprise, seeing both Taekwoon and Sanghyuk on the ground, and how small they’d looked.

“Wha—how did you do that?” Jaehwan’s voice was nothing but shrill, a testament to the condition of his vocal cords.

“There’s a key.”

Sure enough, following Sanghyuk’s deadpan expression, he spotted the key at his feet. Or at least a bunch of metal parts formed into a shiv-like object, with the same grooves a key should have. It was simple enough in theory, but the locks didn't have a visible keyhole, and with the bars obscuring his vision, he resorted to prodding at the lock until it gave way to the wrath of the key.

Taekwoon directed his eyes to the next closest cage, Hongbin’s. He threw it over and managed to slide down the leg of the platform he’d been living atop, propelling himself over the ledge like he was an aerial gymnast.

He was free; they were finally free.

~~

They were outsiders to a world that no longer recognized them. The world wasn’t nearly as bleak as they’d remembered, though the sky was still muddy with layers of grey, the sunlight scraping to peek through the gaps. Yet, there were people, guns brandished for an attack.

There were people, and he was irate. R.O.V.I.X. had washed into their minds that they were the only ones left, yet there was still a sparse amount of people desperate to survive in a wasteland not meant for them. None of them could’ve possibly known them, it’d been too long. Nonetheless, these newcomers were real people, birthed with the purpose to see the reformation of Earth and civilization as a whole.

“We need to leave,” Taekwoon was the first to break the glass hung up by the unbearable laconism of sound. It was a hush, just audible over the blowing of wind. But it was commanding, just enough to set them into motion.

~~

“Is this it?” Hongbin asked, carefully treading along the floor as if it could’ve collapsed at any instance. And in all likelihood, it could’ve.

With no regard towards Hongbin, Jaehwan shakily sat down on the old wooden floor and smiled, “So, now can we get to know each other?”

They hardly ever exchanged words in their place of captivity, yet the silence was easily filled with low drones that’d become all but white noise. But without it, the ambience was drearier than when they were in captivity. The howling wind that shook the house at its roots was sharp and distracting.

“Yeah, sure,” as if breathless, Hongbin responded.

Lilting winds chilled the room to ice, halting their movement to nothing. For the first time in a century, they were free, and for the first time in over a century, they didn’t know what to do. It was an oppressive chill that forced them to their knees in return for salvation from themselves.

“Okay, I’m Jaehwan,”—a dead silence—“I wanted to be famous—I sang. I dreamt of becoming the face of music, but…” Jaehwan trailed off, but the implication was evident.

The war quite literally tore their lives apart. The government drafted citizens by the flock, tearing innocent people from their lives to fight for a cause they didn't believe in. All while the few people who’d escaped it sat pristinely in their high chairs, poised as if there wasn't a crisis around them.

He’d escaped the draft, but his companions weren't as lucky, evidently.

“Well, I’m Wonshik, and this is Taekwoon,” no one jumped to speak next, Wonshik was only prodded by Taekwoon, “And we were on the seventh infantry. We were meant to be dispatched the day the bomb dropped.”

If hadn't come to his awareness that at least one of them had known another one of them, it seemed too improbable.

“Sanghyuk. I was a student.”

“I'm Hongbin. I was a nurse out on the field.”

He wasn't anyone before the war, and he wasn't anyone after. He didn't have a story to tell, yet his book was just flipping open.

~~

Peace couldn't last forever, there was no way it ever could've. The thought had been cemented into their brains until it was the only thing they could recite what they’d been told verbatim.

“I saved you from the wasteland,” R.O.V.I.X. had said, it's tentacle-esque extremities looming menacingly near each of them, “You're safe here, but don't expect it to last. The world’s ended and you should be dead. Everyone should be, but beware that you aren't the only exceptions. You will not survive without me. The peace cannot last forever.”

And never was it more true than when the windows shattered open with the bursting of his eardrums that formed a percussive half to the remains of peace in their temporary home.

They hid because even though they had no purpose outside, they'd have paid anything to be outside the hellhole the computer had caused. They hid because they were finally free. They hid because they had no choice not to.

Desperation clawed up their throats until they could no longer breathe in the radioactive air. Their transient freedom sheltered them from the premonition of captivity only to throw them back into the pits of mental torture.

Wonshik was rising slowly, though much too quickly for any one of them to process.

 

The remembrance of R.O.V.I.X. instilled fear that burrowed deep into their minds, yet they couldn't forget what it’d done for them.

It saved them, but that sentiment was left in the dust when the years of flagellation was all they thought of. All but Wonshik. Wonshik, who was overly forgiving, and much too benevolent for the wasteland. Wonshik, who too easily forgot their suffering.

But it wasn't the blatant disregard for the truth, they’d seen the man pick at his wounds with blackened fingernails. They’d seen Wonshik look to the others, hands wavering above their lacerations that seemed to stretch down to the expenses of their body like an orifice, before putting his hand back down. There wasn’t a hint that Wonshik wasn’t grounded to reality, far from it, Wonshik was too far down to see anything but reality.

 

Taekwoon reached his hand out to stop Wonshik. They broke to the ground, snapping the fragile planks to a pulp. But they were safe, and that's all that mattered to them.

The wraith of glass shards floating through the open air, it was a glimmering dulcet as a cruel reminder of their situation. They were trapped, not underground, but from the outside.

Whatever it was that was outside, it was gone. The relaxed, and the day continued.

~~

That overwhelmingly oppressive sense of dread seemed to return after the strange attack. They’d left as soon as they were sure nothing would jump out at them. As far as nomadism went, there were only so many buildings that were still standing through years of radiation and emptiness. Still, everyone was on edge, ready to pounce when necessary.

They were defenseless, though. Everything had been either destroyed or taken, and they were just picking up the leftovers. But they had a silent agreement. At least one of them had to stay awake once they’d settled, armed with some trinket they'd found on the road. If anything, their plan wasn't for their safety, there were too little people, it was for them to feel somewhat safe.

He’d probably been awake for an entire day when Taekwoon sat down next to him.

“How's it going?” although just as soft-spoken as ever, Taekwoon felt more comfortable against his body. The slightly taller male—it was a fairly recent revelation—felt less rigid, less nervous. It was comforting.

There didn't need to be a response, they just stared up, up at the slivers of light shining over the top of the dark curtain and reflecting off of the stippled ceiling.

“Do you think you can write at all?” Taekwoon jumped to action, rough and quick. Without a response, Taekwoon went to search for a writing utensil and something to write on.

Then it landed in front of him. A dusty notepad where several pages melded together into a cinder block and a pen, grisled beyond belief.

He couldn't write, his bones had been crushed to dust from underneath his skin and had to heal without the aid of anything but himself.

It never got better, and he still couldn't use either of hands properly. It burned too much to.

“Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't think.”

And he was alone again.

~~

Sanghyuk had awoken the rest of them with a yelp. In the dead silence, it was impossible not to hear.

Through the stygian silence, something sprung to life. And each one of them followed. They craned their necks until they saw even the glint of wrongness present. But they found nothing. It was just Sanghyuk, quivering until the floor shook.

The boy looked unbelievably young again, hardly out of adolescence, and yet the boy had seen each one of them deconstructed and reconstructed like lego pieces being switched around from place-to-place. It felt terrifying, there was no way it looked any better.

He wanted to reach his hands out, wrap his arms around Sanghyuk until all the pain in their bones disappeared. But he was paralyzed in his spot, watching as the other men went to take his place.

“Hyukkie, we’re safe. We're safe,” but were they really? They couldn't know for sure.

“We’re out.”

Jaehwan squeezed his arms tightly around Sanghyuk while the rest were at the boy’s sides like an impenetrable wall.

It was so domestic that, if not for their horrifyingly mangled skin, they’d feel like a real family before all hell had broken loose.

~~

When the sky had faded to a lime color, hints of its original blue peeking through the large yellow clouds, they’d finally opened their arms to accept the hope they wanted to feel for years. It was indelible, the unfamiliar feeling sinking through his pores until he began to feel again.

And only once he regained his senses did he feel the rough scabs poking into his skin until they prickled with blood, flowing in sanguineous patterns of waterfalls from beneath his wounds. The terrifyingly mild weather, gave way to an idle sky. It was suffocating.

“We've gotta leave. Fast.” they could hear the drone of white noise return from the distance, crescendoing until it no longer sounded piecing from its doppler effect.

As a group, they were slow, ambling just to scrape past the door frame and put into the wild. The streets had never looked so empty, devoid of all life except for them.

The whir of machinery drew nearer no matter how far or fast they ran, yet R.O.V.I.X. never became visible through their shaking peripherals.

~~

They climbed into the wreckage of a rusty, metal building until the whir passed.

Then every single limb in his body seized, excited momentarily by an imaginary electric shock just to fall still. His being ached with years of torture until it was all he felt. Not the warmth of his friends or the cold metal he sat on.

A century of torture was a long time, yet he still held this grotesque abhorrence towards the supercomputer. He loathed the mere existence of the object.

But Wonshik still lagged behind, still tentatively following them as if the taller man didn't trust the rest of them. Sanghyuk was still a child, Jaehwan still acted like a child, and Hongbin just followed along. Out of all of them, however, Taekwoon was impossible to pinpoint. The male wasn't a leader, but also wasn't a compliant follower.

He didn't want to know if any of them would've betrayed them. He didn't want to know that, he wanted to focus more on the freedom. The freedom came with a cost, they were used to being free.

When he finally came to, he no longer had to worry about an imminent betrayal. They were in a different place, yet everyone was still there. And when he regained control of his body, he heard it.

“I don't think I can carry on,” distinctly, it sounded like Sanghyuk. The young man was being consoled by the others, leaving Wonshik in their wake.

“I’m not gonna betray you,” the man's voice was low, just barely a whisper above the blowing winds and squeaking tiles on the ground, “Taekwoon told me you had that look on your face.”

He was never too expressive, or at least in the correct way, people far too often misconstrued his faces as sadness or anger. How Taekwoon managed to figure him out so clearly was beyond him and the enigma of Taekwoon only grew with his curiosity.

He nodded, raising an eyebrow at the source of noise.

“You’re good, right?” Wonshik disregarded his concern as a look of boredom, “Like, you’re not hurt more than you were before, right?”

There was nothing he could’ve done. He shook his head and looked up to the ceiling before finally getting up. His muscles were sore, a sour feeling spreading through his contorted body. Wonshik followed closely behind, the man’s shoes scuffing at the ground as they moved only for it to stop just as he did.  
Indistinct voices echoed through slightly ajar doors, pouring in as gently as the fuzzy light from the other side. They were muted, dizzyingly close yet far away. If not for Wonshik being just about a meter away, he would’ve backed away to rest until everything stopped. But he couldn’t. They pressed on.

“I’m so tired of this,” Sanghyuk was on the ground, a kicked dog begging for mercy until the pain stopped or all sensations stopped.

“We’ve gotta keep going,” Jaehwan was standing a bit taller than usual, though the man’s fade was still angled down to face Sanghyuk head on. The mix of confidence and insecurity was an amalgamation of conflictedness that had built up for years, “We can find a savior for humanity.”

“We don’t need one if it’s already dead,” as pessimistic as it was, Sanghyuk was telling the truth, and it was scary coming from the young man’s mouth.

“Guys, stop,” they didn’t have a definite mediator for quarrels like this, but Taekwoon was the closest thing to it. The intimidating male spoke with purpose, and in one simple command, all movement halted. When the light voice became firm, it wasn’t a statement anymore, it was an exhortation.

“Let’s just move, alright?”

~~

Perchance it had been a hundred years. And it could’ve just as easily have been a hundred seconds. Whichever one it was, he didn’t want to know. Ignorance far outweighed the truth.

Whether it was one hundred seconds or years, it took that long for him to hear it after another hundred years of radio silence from any of their mouths. The shouts returned at full tilt, more throat tearing than he’d remembered. They were guttural, thorns scraping the sensitive skin of the throat until it ripped everything into pieces.

And when they reached his ears, he shot up from his slumber. It was a splash of cold water on a cold winter day. Deliriously and drowsily, he stumbled over to the source of the sound and lied down next to the other. His eyes fell closed before he could even register who it was. The other wasn't that much taller than him, although still bigger than him, a warmth bleeding through the cracks of hardened skin.

If the other person was uncomfortable or annoyed, they didn’t show it.

 

His next rude awakening was falling from the dusty bed and onto the dusty floor to be greeted by Hongbin. The handsome man did not smile, instead frowning down at him.

“What were you doing in here?” The man asked, “Didn’t you sleep in the other room?”

Everything had muddled into his brain until it amalgamated into a paste of confusion, he was too tired to even begin to remember.

“Never mind that, something’s wrong with him, right?” Hongbin continued, floating across the room as lightly as a feather, padding around him until he was standing, “I just don't know what to do, y’know?”

It wasn't an outright admission on Hongbin’s part, it was a cry for help. It was an issue he wasn't able to solve, and all he could do was listen.

They were out of the room when Hongbin continued, “I'm scared… not of you, of course, or even R.O.V.I.X. I'm scared what’ll happen if we separate.”

And there was the confession. Hongbin, who was either emotionless or sarcastic and looked so tall and impenetrable in stature, felt so small. They were all around the same age, plus or minus a few years, yet those two, three, four years made centuries of difference. Wonshik, Hongbin, and Sanghyuk had still barely been adults when they were captured, and it showed.

He was cognizant enough to know he didn't suffer nearly as much as them, but it didn't make him apathetic to their pain. He was on the same boat as Hongbin. He didn't know what to do about it.

~~

The sun was growing brighter by the day, unrestrainedly vaulting it's harsh rays to the Earth. It had been a year since they'd escaped, yet there they were, still terrified of their recapture. It built up and grew and grew. A roaring current crashing in wakes against the dam of their fragile psyches. It was the awakening of a collapsed stature, sending it into a life it didn't desire.

“I’m scared,” and when Sanghyuk finally relayed the same words Hongbin had said to him, he found that it wasn’t just him suffering. They all were. And he didn't know what to do. The boy continued, “I want to go back.”

Sanghyuk’s voice garbled and cracked like a damaged machine, begging to get a kickstart. The younger's sobs clawed at the esophagus and tore through his ear canals and shook him to his core. He opened his arms for the boy, a feeble attempt towards consolation. And if not for a split second, their sorrows washed away.

His entirety ached with year old, possibly centuries old just by the feeling of them, injuries inflicted in no more than five minutes, but felt like five hours. But he was stronger than that, he had to be.

He was the oldest.

~~

The whir had grown constant and they were running.

~~

Sanghyuk stopped in the middle of the road, succumbing to the computer before any one of them could react.

~~

Hongbin had gotten injured, and none of them had the tools to tend to it. But Hongbin was strong, they just needed somewhere to hide.

~~

Wonshik had broken down, and no one knew what to do.

~~

Jaehwan was silent, eerily so.

~~

Where was Taekwoon? No one knew. No one had the time to look.

~~

The game of hide and seek lasted for what felt like days, and yet they still lost members of their party.

He should've seen it coming, but he was so preoccupied in getting to safety, he didn't pay attention to the others. Salvation wasn't coming. He was scared for the others.

“Y’know,” Hongbin said, eyes glassy and voice as thin as hair, “I preferred it when you were doing… whatever it was that you were doing.”

A sardonic smile was all that could be mustered up, too morose for an open-mouthed smile, “Yeah,” Jaehwan had breathed out, the noise itself haggard and airy. Yet those dark brown eyes brightened ever so slightly.

They survived, yet they were the ones most unhappy. They were somnambulists trying to make their ways to salvation when it didn't exist outside of their untimely demise. No one even dared to open their mouths, they drifted across emptiness.

He wondered what would've happened had he have been the only one to separate. With his momentarily enhanced senses, exponentialized by the robot’s indefinite control over his mind and his senses, he could still hear the faint hum of machinery however far away it was.

He had a plan to reunite them with their friends, intently watching Hongbin and Wonshik mourn silently.

~~

There was no bequeathing of a prized possession in exchange for the two boys captured with the supercomputer. There was no bargaining for a deal uneven for the both of them. He’d just set out, alone for the first time in years, and waited. Waited for the piercing of the deafening silence and the ending of his suffering.

But nothing. He craned his neck until the crick popped open with the cracking of his ears. Even still, the emptiness still whipped at his thickened skin.

He began moving.

~~

They came out from somewhere, and there he was. Where he last remembered their escape was from. And as he looked down into the endless black abyss, he was suddenly petrified.

He didn't want to be tortured again. But he sure as hell didn't want two innocent young men to suffer either.

~~

Sanghyuk was so young when he’d first met the kid. Sanghyuk was shorter than him, frail and weak, even after they were all injected with the same serum to make them resilient, yet not quite durable. Yet the boy was one of the strongest people he'd met. Sanghyuk refused to be knocked down held his head up high to any oncoming dangers. It’s something he wished he could've shared with the boy.

Taekwoon was unreadable. At times, so nonplussed, he was scared the man had gone brain dead. While other times, Taekwoon was shaken down to the depths of his core, unable to process the new stimuli hitting each of their bodies in waves of flagellation increasing in magnitude.

Neither of them could've possibly died, and not just because they were strong, resilient people, but because they literally could not. Even so, that fact didn't narrow down any possible location either of them could've been.

Worry had drifted up into the air hours ago, not just for the two captives, but also for the remaining men who were still together.

He was the oldest out of all of them, yet he couldn't help save all of them. Had he have saved Taekwoon and Sanghyuk, he couldn't help Jaehwan, Wonshik, and Hongbin to salvation. And had he have saved the others, Taekwoon and Sanghyuk could've been tortured to near death or insanity. There was no time to make the decision. He’d already set out to find the missing members of their entourage.

Jaehwan was so cheerful that at times, the man acted like they weren't being tortured for the enjoyment of a computer who’d forced itself to pass the Turing test under a volition even the developers likely didn't know it had. Yet the smiles and quips never seemed to reach beneath surface level. Jaehwan wasn't happy but forced himself to be.

War had ravaged their world for years. And even when peace came after the dropping of a weapon not meant to be launched, nothing calming for any one of them. Wonshik was no different. They were all scarred in some way, and being tossed aside like nothing more than flotsam and jetsam made didn't do a lick of help for the poor man. The main difference was how easily they managed to hide their grievances, and Wonshik wore his heart on his sleeve.

It was shocking how quiet Hongbin had been. The youngest of the remainder of their coterie had never been loud, but hadn't necessarily been quiet. It somehow managed to serve as a point of comfort for the others, the near silence managing to relax their worry while not being a dead one. Hongbin was a mediator despite whatever pain had been inflicted onto him. Hongbin was a humanitarian before a self-aggrandizer.

He didn't fit into the puzzle laid out in front of him. He was an outsider looking in.

~~

They had no means to truly escape without the imminent fear of being caught. As much as they’d prayed for salvation, it wasn't meant to be.

While he was gone, Jaehwan, Wonshik, and Hongbin had the time to speak.

“Do you think we’ll ever get saved?” Wonshik had asked, watching Jaehwan move up and down the dirt, searching for their lost friends.

“Truthfully, no,” Hongbin answered, not once sparing a look to either of the other men.

“Any elaboration?” they needed to fill the silence. It was unbearable.

“We can't die. R.O.V.I.X. can't die. Any more you need to know?” Hongbin bent down to sit down carefully on a tall rock, not having been blown to smithereens by the attack on the entire world.

“Actually,” Hongbin startled when Jaehwan popped him out of his trance, “We can't die from torture, but can we die some other way?”

“Wait, what?”

“We can’t die through R.O.V.I.X., but we may be able to escape some other way,” as if it were the most logical conclusion, Jaehwan had continued, “Suicide.”

“Hang on, how the hell did you get to that conclusion?” there had been steps Jaehwan was taking to get to his conclusion, all while Hongbin had fallen down each step, trying to get up from the bottom.

“If the only way we can truly escape is death, we need to find a way to do so. So…”

 

“Where are they?” R.O.V.I.X.’s robotic voice clanged against the walls of the underground and shook Taekwoon and Sanghyuk to their cores.

The computer had beaten and bruised them until all they felt were the indentations where their skin wasn't malleable and the convex inflation of their bloated skin. But the one hamartia in R.O.V.I.X.’s plan was the overlooking of the century of abuse they’d faced.

Neither Sanghyuk nor Taekwoon were willing to speak through the slits carved into their lips. They were battered, pleaded to, battered again, then pleaded to again. It was a cycle intended to drive them mad, yet their lips remained sealed.

There wasn’t an attempt to escape either. They just waited.

~~

Their skin was covered from head-to-toe in years worth of blood and sweat, yet there was a hesitation for diving head first into the fallout for some tool to aid them.

“Are you sure we should do this?” Wonshik eyed the jagged edges of metal overhanging over the orifice of other potentially dangerous materials, hesitant to approach.

Pausing only to give a Wonshik quick once over, Jaehwan returned his attention to the scraps before saying, “Do you want to risk getting caught again?” which was the catalyst for Wonshik to scramble down to his knees after a moment’s hesitation.

The few buildings that weren’t completely destroyed yielded no true value. They’d either been looted after the other few survivors that didn’t get trapped like them, or had just been exposed to too much radiation. The sharp metal trapped deep within the depths of the piles was their best option.

A piece of metal strong enough to pierce through leather-esque skin was alarmingly difficult to acquire. Much of the wreckage had been shrouded in layers of rust and dust. So much so that the metal had weakened and bent away from its harsh edges. Finding sharp glass was no easier. The shining crystalline material scattered to the winds were no larger than their fingerprints, hidden beneath the dirt.

Wonshik threw the shattered glass onto the ground, a dust storm of crystals flowing with the wind. After making sure he caught the attention of either Jaehwan or Hongbin, he spoke, “We’re wasting our time.”

At some point between the loss of Sanghyuk and Taekwoon, and them searching through the mile long stretch of rubbish, Hongbin had a somewhat of a change of heart. The youngest of the three, aloof as ever, had withdrawn into himself before visibly breaking down. In an unnaturally high voice, Hongbin flew into a conniption, “We need to find something, just anything. I don’t want to be found again. I can't be caught. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” tremulously sifting his reddened hands through the trash.

It was a mantra, “I can't, I can't, I can’t,” bludgeoned into their minds until it was they thought. It was all they remembered. The blur between the present and the past merged until they couldn't remember when the silence ended and where the pleas began.

“I can't, I can't, I can't,” until the clanging of metal grew progressively tumultuous enough to drown out the cries of agony.

“I can't, I can't, I can't,” echoing, echoing, echoing until words merged with the unsheathing of a sharp piece of metal, concealed beneath an ocean of garbage.

“I can't, I can't, I can't,” reverberating in the air when everything stopped.

In abject bewilderment, Wonshik and Jaehwan had been resigned to watch Hongbin as the “I can't”s merged with the rising of blood from pale lips. Hongbin has missed his heart, they could see it in the blade jutting out from the still moving chest.

They had to remove the blade from their friend’s seizing corpse.

~~

Blues bleeding to browns to ashes drifted to land, crashing against the emptied land as if the world hadn't ended. And there Taekwoon and Sanghyuk were, drifting along the surface of the water, bathing in the nonexistent sunlight. Jaehwan, Wonshik, and Hongbin were resting on the ashy sand bed doing the same.

They were smiling, unharmed even with the rumbling of the remains of ruins cascading thin layers of dust onto them. They were alive.

They were unharmed. Even pieces of metal piercing thick skin, oxidized to the point of discoloration, seemed to evanesce from their bodies as soon as the light rained down onto them.

But he was nowhere to be seen.

~~

Few machines escaped the bounds of intelligence beyond the Turing test, yet R.O.V.I.X. was the first to be truly depraved. Humanity had deprived it of its morality, and it manifested into an evil released only onto the six of them.

The publicity of anything and everything humans had online gave it access to everything imaginable, encrypted or not. Nothing was truly private, and it used that to its advantage.

A schadenfreude strong enough to burn the bridges that had already been crossed far too long ago. The humans that had controlled it and its inherently unintelligent programming.

It easily manipulated the survivors, watching the few people—it's former captors—that hadn't died immediately melt away inside-out from the noxious gases drifting across the Earth. It's blank, unchanging image affixed to its screen saw an even smaller percentage remain nonplussed and tall, albeit in similar stupors having watched their people die in front of them.

It knew what it had to do the moment it saw those survivors.

~~

Greys bled into brown, a sanguineous fluid dripping from mounds of dust. they were the halcyon times of night time with family, the faucet left to drip into the dirty pots and pans saved to be washed tomorrow, a calm after the jostling storm that contained, rather than moroseness, was built from ebullience. Shards of crystals smeared the ground further with the ichor from the souls of the forgotten. And heavy metal bars had been snapped in half like a 9B pencil left in water for days on end, stained with a similar fluid.

Jaehwan, Wonshik, and Hongbin, all on their individual beds. Taekwoon and Sanghyuk, sprawled out with their hands reaching out to a salvation just in sight.

The destruction of the ruins that had tumbled with age fell onto the former three of the five’s bodies, covered each of them in a fine film of soot, masking the cessation of a human heart with ease. And the last two bodies had burnt at the hands of the cold machine.

Plumes of dust made the departed appear just tangible enough for one to see, just akin to the billows of smoke caused by the nuclear explosion. But they were blind, unseeing as they drifted to nothingness with the fading of dust.

And he was nowhere to be seen.

~~

A calm day—maybe two hundred years, three hundred, four hundred years after the first whistle of projectiles were heard—gave way to a change.

The first flower sprouted up from the stained dirt.

~~

Four other flowers grew where the first one first peered up from the ground.

~~

Taekwoon Jung was twenty-three at the start of the war. Taekwoon was twenty-three when he was conscripted and twenty-four when he was sent out to the thirty-eighth parallel. Taekwoon was twenty-four when he was losing hope. He was almost twenty-five when he met Wonshik.

Wonshik Kim was twenty when he enlisted just as the war began again. Wonshik has just turned twenty-one when he was sent out. He was twenty-one when he met Taekwoon.

Perhaps they may have fallen in love if not for the bullet rain from all directions as they watched their comrades fall victim to the rainfall. Maybe if they hadn't been sent off in different directions just as the sirens went off. If the everpresent ubiety of different world views hadn't culminated into a man against society story. They were fighting in their own war away from the major one.

Jaehwan Lee was twenty-one when the war began. Jaehwan was twenty-one when he was finishing his final year in college. Jaehwan was twenty-one when they exempted him from the draft. Jaehwan was twenty-two when he met Hongbin.

Hongbin Lee was twenty when he heard his friends talk about enlisting and the draft. Hongbin was ten when he found out about his weak constitution, and was thirteen when he was put on hospice. He was twenty when he was deemed too unwell to enlist. Hongbin was twenty-one when he met a handsome new nurse who’d somehow escaped the draft, and he was twenty-one when he first met Jaehwan.

They were polar opposites, yet they became immeasurably close within the time before the bomb drop. They snuck into the cellar beneath the hospital the day the bomb dropped. They didn't even hear the crash.

Sanghyuk Han was eighteen when the war began. Sanghyuk was nineteen when he heard about the draft. He was nineteen when his mom and dad—his ma and pa—begged him not to go. He was twelve when his father was sent onto the field and fifteen when his father came back without a leg, decorated with an attempt to cover the absence of a body part. He was nineteen when he decided he could wait a little longer before he signed up for the conscription.

He, not any of the five others, just he, didn't have a life before or after the war.

~~

Two flowers were tangled around each other, close enough to form its own new life form.

Another two, too far away to wrap around each other, but just close enough to touch.

The last one, standing tall between the other four.

~~

The five flowers matured, waiting patiently for the sixth to peek from the dirt.

~~

Five hundred years after the end of the world brought barren wasteland. Five hundred years and the radiation finally faded from the air. Five hundred years and the conflict that led to the M.A.D. felt so insignificant, it was hardly a speck on the dead planet.

~~

Six hundred years and hundreds upon thousands of flowers bloomed with the slow fade of a rebirth of hope for the returning creatures. Six hundred years brought a new Earth.

~~

Seven hundred years brought R.O.V.I.X. up from underground, a cage hanging off a loose wire.

He was there.

~~

Centuries of emptiness revoked him of an identity. He didn't know who he was anymore. No one was there to remind him. All he had was the ruin, the dark underground lit by a few lights connected to R.O.V.I.X.’s wires, the raging fire underneath his small cage, and the bright screen with a blank and unmoving face staring back at him.

He wasn't anything or anyone anymore. He wasn't allowed to be anything, even when he was burned and frozen on repeat for what felt like millions of times, he wasn't allowed to feel. The epicaricacy kept him awake for the non-sedated surgeries and kept him awake for days, maybe months just to feel the bitter cold or the return of unnaturally hot air circulating through the core of the planet. He was trapped.

Elysium was unachievable, and he wasn't trying. It’d been ingrained into him like a parasite, eating him away until he was just a shell.

He wasn't allowed to shriek. His mouth had been sealed shut, temporarily the first century or two, and permanently after his return to R.O.V.I.X. two hundred some years afterward. But only when the machine charged at him with a new piece of machinery did he wish for his mouth again.

He was a statue, unable to move or speak. He was Galatea hoping to one day find his freedom. But Pygmalion wouldn't let him go.

And as R.O.V.I.X. presented the new tool to him through his backside did he truly yearn for freedom again.

He was crushed, burned, cut, pierced, diced, yet he couldn't die. It was something R.O.V.I.X. had perfected, and it was something he loathed about the machine. He couldn't even scream the pain away.

He had no mouth, yet the guttural noises tore at his broken vocal chords, and through his nose, mitigated slightly in volume. His breath burned the scarring of his lips, teetering the metal rod precariously down his mouth until it threatened to fall out. The burning hurt, and he screamed through the absence of his mouth.

As he knelt on the ground, his hands tied behind his back with chains, hardly moving for fear of nipping his skin on the hard metal, he called. But try as he might to get the attention of anyone other than the computer, no one answered his calls. It was then when he came to the revelation of his future.

Freedom would never come. And he’d be trapped for eternity.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i really liked vixx’s dark concepts so i thought this bleak and disturbing sci-fi novel describing a alternate future of absolute destruction was clearly the best next step from their other dark concepts. absurd, i know. plus, them having rovix just made it a match made in heaven.
> 
> and also, the doomsday clock (approximately the last quarter of a clock where midnight is an apocalypse) dropping from three minutes till midnight to two and a half in 2017 and later to two minutes in 2018 and staying that way in 2019 was honestly a kickstart to that as well. (which, by the way, is the closest to midnight we’ve been since the u.s.s.r. tested the first hydrogen bomb back in 1953.)
> 
> so main inspirations: an incredibly disturbing sci-fi book and it’s video game, a group that has once done a few dark concepts (namely one having to do with a certain kind of doll), and the world possibly dying soon. perfect.
> 
> (edit 2020: lmao, did i just predict the end of the world? we’re now closer than ever to the end of the world; we’re one hundred seconds till midnight, closer than we’ve ever been to the end of the world. howdy doo)


End file.
